A "cuter" side of pain: What pain is, and what it’s trying to tell you.
Disclaimer: This is an opinion blog. I may use clinical knowledge and experience as a Physiotherapist to develop this content. I will also cite resources where appropriate. However, this content does not replace nor seek to replace the consultation with a Physiotherapist or other healthcare professional for your health concerns.
Pain is a tricky thing. No one ever wants to be in pain. It’s unpleasant, and it affects our ability to enjoy our lives to the fullest. In this light, pain can be painted as the antagonist to our agonistic selves. However, a different story may be right where the roles may be reversed (like WICKED the musical telling the REAL story of “The Wicked Witch”).
For the purpose of this post, I want to clarify a few terms. Pain that comes on really quickly will be called “quick pain,” and pain that lasts a long time will be called “long pain.” The technical terms for these are “acute pain” and “persistent pain,” respectively, if you want to look into them further afterwards.
What is pain?
MANY pathways are going from the body to the brain. Pain is the signal that goes from the body to the brain through the PAIN pathway—nothing else.
We have the pain pathway because it tells the brain if something damaging is happening to the body. That is one of the many ways that the body protects itself from any kind of damage. That being said, pain is usually caused by some unpleasant things affecting the body (e.g. ankle sprain). The unpleasant thing is often creating some form of small or large scale damage to the body.
When the brain receives this important signal from the body, the brain itself releases feel-good chemicals that decrease the intensity of the pain you feel, like built-in pain killers. The rest of the body also gets to work and starts the healing process, which we usually see and feel like swelling, redness, and heat. The brain even starts telling the body not to use the area or the limb that has been damaged so that everything can heal adequately (e.g. if you sprain your right ankle, your entire right leg becomes weaker).
Basically, pain is a GOOD thing! It keeps you alive! In fact, those who lack feeling in their body (e.g. someone with a spinal cord injury) are at higher risk for health complications. If they are also a wheelchair user, they may develop things called “pressure sores” which occur because of a lack of blood to certain parts of the body from prolonged pressure on their buttocks while sitting. A wheelchair user may have to move around every 15 minutes or so to allow blood to flow back into these areas to avoid pressure sores. And that comes from not being able to feel the lack of blood flow going to those body areas.
Recovery from quick pain
You and your pain-free self, live happily ever after. The end!
If only it were that easy…
Even with quick pain, the brain tells the body in the short term to stop using that body part, and as a result, the entire limb may become weaker. That is why the recovery process needs to focus on telling the brain that it is okay to use that body part again and “regaining the brain’s trust” in that body part. This way, the injury has as few adverse effects on the rest of the body as possible following an injury.
What happens when pain lasts a long time?
In a previous move to live blog post, we introduced how the brain and the body have two-way communication, and the body is always talking with the brain. In this case, the body keeps telling the brain that damage is happening, even though sometimes, no physical damage is actually happening. The brain continues to think that this information is essential, and so it pays more and more attention to this signal, and the message gets louder and feels like it will never go away. If it is a muscle/bone/joint/nerve pain, a lot of times, the pain may be linked to a particular movement, like if you bend forwards to touch your toes, it hurts. You may have had a disc injury there before, but now, even though that has healed, your back still hurts every time you bend forwards. With long pain, the key to recovery is moving the body part that was injured but doing it in a pain-free way! Recovery will hopefully be about to re-teaching the brain that the movement it used to think was damaging (like bending forwards) is no longer painful.
So, is pain REALLY evil?
The simple answer is no. Pain is actually a good thing that protects us from doing severe damage to ourselves while living our lives. Often, we should pay attention to this pain to tell us to avoid doing something wrong.
Pain can take on an evil vibe when it lingers and starts affecting our ability to enjoy our lives for a prolonged period.
In either case, recovery is all about ensuring the brain can trust the body part again. This is done by strengthening and moving that body part around in a pain-free way and finding enjoyable and active things to get back to in your life to keep the motivation for recovery high.
For more information on the REAL story behind pain, visit the website for "the international association for the study of pain science" (IASP) at:
Until next time!